Down with Downward Mobility

Ten years of working as a teacher, and two expensive degrees later, Miss Cheapist contemplated the notion of downward mobility—or more specifically, whether or not her personal ethos of fiscal cheapism and emotional generosity was working for her. She began to yearn for the advancement experienced by her corporate lawyer friends, who once toiled away at teaching and publishing jobs, and years later, regained consciousness and chose to obtain marketable graduate degrees. Now they make six figures with chunky bonuses. When the thrill of being the first in her family to receive such an elite education finally subsided, Miss Cheapist had to question the true value of her education and the cost of her parents’ sacrifice. Was teaching a true calling, or was it delaying her from developing ambitions and a sense of practicality? Moreover, was she isolating herself from others with the claim that “money didn’t matter,” and that she couldn’t do a job “just for the money?”

After a quick survey, she identified three distinct groups of peers:
1) those enjoying life without analysis, primarily with inherited wealth and expensive hobbies
2) Those who pulled themselves up from their bootstraps, claiming they “earned” it all themselves; and,
3) A nebulous group of others who lived paycheck to paycheck and seemed socially assimilated, but were not on track to meet or surpass their parents in income, assets or sensibility.

This final group remains the downwardly mobile. They are often overwhelmed with the achievements of earlier generations, but believing that their parents sacrificed for their happiness, can justify their own personal choices. They say things like, “I can’t believe my mother held a full-time job, and had dinner ready for us when we came home,” or, “how did they have two kids and a Jetta by the time they were our age?” The downwardly mobile are insightful and articulate--but can they truly be happy if they do not reproduce the life their parents provided for them?

Sadly enough, Miss Cheapist never imagined herself being downwardly mobile. After all, she had a work ethic (think Lloyd on Entourage). Initially attracted to teaching because it was creative, autonomous and ‘meaning-driven,’ the profession lost some of its luster when her former colleagues left schools for corporate America (upwardly mobile), or to work in restaurants and make more money in tips alone (upwardly mobile?), and new colleagues entered as “career changers,” receiving bonuses for their “past work experience” in valued sectors (downwardly mobile, clearly). They were all good people who helped her to feel a part of a dynamic educational community. But after accumulating years of street ‘cred and few transferable skills, Miss Cheapist quickly learned that the only way to make more money was to become a principal. Unfortunately, she did not have the same drive as those who had taught for only few years and felt qualified to run a school, or others who could really serve as vanguards in their own communities. The thought of starting up a whole institution from scratch and carving away a cult of personality in the name of school reform seemed even less suitable for Miss Cheapist than finding work on Wall Street. She was never a fan of reinventing the wheel.

So will cheapism sustain her? Is it realistic to make a difference, but not make a dime? The new climate of transforming the public sector into a “business model,” has pushed for a new language of quantification, and forced all employees to become professional fundraisers and data hounds. Few went into the field for that kind work, especially not to receive lower pay than real bean counters! To many it seems like a wasted investment on education to toil away in the world of middle-management at ones community grassroots organization, and watch CEOs become Executive Directors of the United Ways of the world. Her skepticism depresses Miss Cheapist more than her paycheck. Perhaps she would feel better and develop some real ambitions if there was more respect assigned to the field, and if others could recognize that she doesn’t get paid less--others just get paid far too much! In the meantime, she just has to stay cheap. And maybe get better at math.

Battle of the Sexes: Cheapism & Expectation

A friend once told Miss Cheapist that in finding a man she had to choose between two types: one who made a great deal of money and was emotionally unavailable, and one who made less money, but was more generous with his time and feelings. In the mid-1990s, it seemed that there were indeed these two types of guys: investment bankers who seemed often were first to offer free rounds of drinks and at the same time justified their binge drinking and strip-club addictions to an intense work life. The other group consisted of men dedicated to art and social justice, who had to actually work out their character flaws and pursue sensitive pastimes like yoga and listening. But did sensitivity make a man more reliable?

At that moment, in her early 20s, this friend’s binary of manhood made sense. Realistically, how could one expect a male partner to really embody all desired virtues? After all, Miss Cheapist heard repeated warnings to young women in this post-feminist era that it was impossible to have it all. However, in light of recent facts and anecdotes, she has come to question this idea that women must limit their expectations, in the face of a cheapness of will from the opposite sex. Even when she could accept that women couldn’t have it all, and men couldn’t be all that, she still had to figure out if it was because men were cheap in their motivation, or if they just lacked the ability.

The New York Times recently published an article about successful career women who feared showing off that they made tons of money when dating, for fear that they would scare off men. In the same article, the writer reiterated the latest trend that young women are graduating from high school, and attending college and graduate school in greater numbers than young men. In effect, various sources have implied that there is an impeding crisis in this country; attributed to education, parenting, and even a shared cultural ethos around masculinity.

Many of Miss Cheapist’s female friends have already accepted this reality. They make more money than their partners, choosing to maintain slightly predictable office jobs or going to graduate school to make more money. Meanwhile their partners or husbands are able to maintain free-lance jobs or pursue their artistic passions, often not lucratively. Free from bitterness, women like N. actually prefer that their partners are able to follow their dreams and have passions. N. never wanted to be blamed for robbing a man of the opportunity to find himself (as if all of us have that luxury), and at the same time, believed she could leverage her permissiveness by expecting his domesticity. N.’s criteria for a man was: must be emaciated and hot (in a Diesel model way), artsy, able to complete house chores and, possibly stay at home with the children. She believed that these qualities were actually possible to find in a man, and she had no problem with the role reversal, so long as he fulfilled the role adequately. Somehow she had the fantasy that male pride was not an issue.

Miss Cheapist initially bought into this notion that men would embrace this role, probably because those female friends were wildly successful, and she also heard of men who made sacrifices in an effort to build a nest egg and at the same time, made themselves emotionally available. But slowly she began to realize many men were not interested in taking any responsibility whatsoever, whether it be making enough money to raise a family, or making sure the trash was taken out. It didn’t matter what their occupation--many men did not feel they had to work as hard as women, and scorned conformity as oppressive, but still felt entitled to an upper middle class lifestyle. Miss Cheapist began to hear more stories like those in the New York Times--men who were intimidated by women who made more, but yet weren’t willing to subject themselves to the banality of a desk job or confined to a classroom so that they could be on “equal” footing.

And in the midst of this changing social tide, Miss Cheapist recalled the axiom of her favorite college professor who declared, “Feminism should not eliminate male responsibility!” Did male responsibility become a thing of the past? She was starting to suspect it was a myth to begin with, and for a second, she felt bad that men had such limited options in choosing their identity—"provider," "Mr. Fix-It," "deadbeat," "effeminate." Still, given the history of patriarchy and presence of sexism even today, Miss Cheapist did not want to compromise her expectations for men. Who could she blame? She too wished to pursue her dreams, escape responsibility and travel the Indian subcontinent, live simply on a tropical island. Yet her cheapness in imagination prevented her from envisioning what life would be like without a sense of duty, the predictable routines of being employed, and an unshakeable commitment to martyrdom. Was this characteristic of what society expected of women, or a burden she chose to bear on her own?

Not Ready to Say Goodbye in Long Island City

Still trying to find the next promised land, Miss Cheapist spent a Saturday afternoon with her two male friends, P. and E., hoping to catch up at PS 1’s weekly Warm Up event and see the disco throwback group, Escort, perform. E. had just enrolled in an urban boot camp with the hope that if he woke up at five AM for two weeks, and allowed three women to scream orders at him, he would be shaken from his routine. A better body was only secondary to being rescued from inevitable feelings of ordinariness. Several young professionals had already dropped out of the program, and E. was still hanging on.
With pride, P. announced that after living in the city for over ten years, he was going to leave New York. He came to realize that he could probably continue to maintain his personal artistic projects, earn money being a free-lance web designer, and remain self-employed at home in any other city. So why not move to Oakland, a place where many of their New England educated peers seemed to escape to and thrive? When Miss Cheapist asked what made him finally take the big leap, after talking wistfully about California for years, he responded, “I never really liked New York. My friends were all here, and now they’re gone. It’s just not the same.” Although she had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii, and was seriously reconsidering the value of being a New Yorker, Miss Cheapist believed that he had oversimplified the issues. She had loved the city once, and occasionally could still see its charm. Yes, many of her closest female friends had moved away and found tremendous opportunities elsewhere, but she could still tally up a significant number of acquaintances who lived there and could be counted on for good times. There would always be familiar people and places; yet it was so easy to feel left out of it all.

“Warm-up” is a dance party and beer fest set against the backdrop of pre-war architecture, bad contemporary art, and tribal house music. The three of them moved shoulder to shoulder with crowds of sweaty, enthusiastic outer borough hipsters and their European friends. There were even Black and Latino participants, a surprisingly diverse group so close to Bedford Avenue, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves equally. Quickly the trio became aware that there was something special taking place at P.S. 1, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the exhibit. E., often reluctant to admit that he spent much of the late 80s at the Limelight and other haunts with his Persian elite friends, was the first to comment on the fact that this party was actually fun. It had been a long time since he felt the urge to move with such abandon in a public space. What’s going on here, he kept murmuring. Am I still in New York? Miss Cheapist shared E.’s enthusiasm. They danced with nostalgia, and both of them felt for the first time in a while that they could belong to something, even if it was temporary and somewhat superficial. It was unusual to feel a tone of inclusion in a space intended for people to gather in the name of art and leisure. As trite as it may be to assign so much meaning to a makeshift dancefloor, under fuschia plastic architecture, the group was offered a place for anyone willing to participate.

A scene like this may not have convinced P. to stay longer than the autumn in New York, but it did give Miss Cheapist some hope that she could hold on a bit more.